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Ministry releases modified mosquitoes to curb dengue fever
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A health worker sprays insecticide in a residential area of Cinunuk village in Bandung, West Java, on June 5, 2021, as part of efforts to prevent dengue fever. (Antara/Raisan Al Farisi)
T
he Health Ministry has released modified mosquitoes in Semarang, Central Java, as part of a pilot project to combat dengue fever, which infects thousands of people and kills hundreds in the country each year.
The mosquitoes were infected with Wolbachia, a bacterium that competes with viruses like dengue, making it harder for such viruses to reproduce inside mosquitoes, thus reducing the insects’ ability to transmit dengue to humans.
Following the release in Semarang, the ministry plans to expand the program to four other cities: West Jakarta, Bandung, Bontang in East Kalimantan and Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT).
"The Wolbachia project will complement other dengue-control programs that have been carried out by the health ministry, such as the 3M campaign; the one house, one jumantik program; and the dengue operational work groups, or pokjanal," ministry spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The 3M campaign is a decades-long project to mengubur (bury), menguras (drain) and menutup (cover) areas of stagnant water, which serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
The ministry has also deployed jumantik, volunteer groups tasked with carrying out door-to-door mosquito-larvae control to curb the spread of dengue fever, and pokjanal, village-level teams tasked with educating the public about dengue fever and monitoring and mapping mosquito larvae densities in their areas.
Dengue outbreaks
